RFC: include a cabal-install executable in future GHC releases

[Anthony Cowley]

> On Jan 19, 2014, at 7:02 PM, Carter Schonwald <carter.schonwald at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hey everyone,
> 
> I'd like to propose that GHC releases 7.8.1 onwards include a cabal-install (aka cabal) executable, but not include the library deps of cabal-install that aren't already distributed with ghc.(unless ghc should have those deps baked in, which theres very very good reasons not to do.). 
> 
> currently if someone wants just a basic haskell install of the freshest ghc  they have to install a ghc bindist, then do a boostrap build of cabal-install by hand (if they want to actually get anything done :) ). 
> 
> This is not a human friendly situation for folks who are new to haskell tooling, but want to try out haskell dev on a server style vm or the like! 
> 
> point being: It'd be great for haskell usability (and egads amounts of config time, even by seasoned users) the ghc bindists / installers included a cabal-install binary
> 
> thoughts?
> -Carter

+1

cabal-install works very well, and is key to getting a Haskell development environment up and running. The only downside is if there is much call for minimal GHC binary distributions: If we would need to provide multiple downloads, that starts to verge into HP territory. So I shall clarify my +1 to say that I always want a cabal-install executable with my GHC, but it would be good to hear from people who really don't want that extra baggage.

Anthony